


Always for Never

by Kaythehawk



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: But I don’t have good boyfriend spot and good friend Kath to help me, Conversations about periods, Dysphoria, I made Race go through all the same emotions I did, Implied Trans Female Character, M/M, Trans Male Character, Trans Racetrack Higgins, Trans Spot Conlon, Transphobia, direct response to Always like a girl campaign, explicit period references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 03:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19264951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaythehawk/pseuds/Kaythehawk
Summary: The wrappers look a little more colourful than usual through the packaging but he isn’t super concerned by that since the outside still proclaimed them to be Always brand 10 hour pads. Or at least he isn’t concerned until he pulls out a pad to find a not so discreet female symbol on it.Jarring, certainly but maybe it’s part of an awareness campaign of the different people who have periods and another one would have the male symbol or the non binary symbol?He pulls out another pad and sees #likeagirl on it.





	Always for Never

Race groans as he grabs the new box of pads Spot had bought for him the day before from the shelf next to their toilet. He had ran out and the autoship for his pads and Spot’s tampons wasn’t set to arrive for another two days. The wrappers look a little more colourful than usual through the packaging but he isn’t super concerned by that since the outside still proclaimed them to be Always brand 10 hour pads. Or at least he isn’t concerned until he pulls out a pad to find a not so discreet female symbol on it.

Jarring, certainly but maybe it’s part of an awareness campaign of the different people who have periods and another one would have the male symbol or the non binary symbol?

He pulls out another pad and sees #likeagirl on it.

No, it isn’t an awareness campaign for different people who have periods, it’s a female empowerment campaign.

“What the fuck?”

A feeling of wrongness smacks him like a freight train. He drops both pads. He’s never been bothered by his periods before. At least not in the context of being trans. Wished he had a dick sometimes, yeah; wished he was flat chested, yeah; but never had he wished away his period for any reason other than the fact that cramps suck and bleeding over his pad sucked and not being able to swim because he can never get a tampon in right sucked.

This is different. He doesn’t like this difference. He wants the old wrapping back. It was girly, sure, but it wasn’t dysphoria inducing.

There’s a knock on the door. “You okay in there, Racer?” Spot asks from the other side.

“What the fuck is wrong with Always?” Race calls back.

“What?” Spot asks in confusion.

“They changed their pad wrapper design to a female empowerment one,” Race explains as he blindly grabs one of the pads and hurries to get it in place on his underwear without looking too closely at the packaging. “Oh god, am I a bad feminist for being upset by that? I know female empowerment’s important, but Jesus, I didn’t want to randomly pull out a pad and be faced with a company saying that because I use their product I must be a girl.”

“Oh Racer,” Spot sighes and Race hears his head thunk against the door. “I’m so sorry. There was nothing on the packaging about the wrapper change or I wouldn’t of bought them.”

Race washes his hands and slips out of the bathroom into Spot’s waiting arms.

“Come on, I think you need some hot chocolate,” Spot says. Race can’t help the smile at his boyfriend once again attempting to solve the world’s problems with hot chocolate. The fact that it actually worked in his group home in Brooklyn certainly doesn’t help matters. He briefly ducks into their bedroom to throw an oversized, lightweight hoodie at Race.

Before Race can even think about it, he’s curled up against his boyfriend on the couch in the oversized hoodie with a mug of hot chocolate.

“What are you thinking, Racetrack?” Spot asks him.

“Am I overreacting? Hashtag like a girl is a great campaign idea, you know? Girls and women definitely need that encouragement,” Race says. “But like...seeing a product I need branded with the female symbol...it’s not the same as seeing the hashtag campaign on the other pad. I feel like my pad was trying to say that it doesn’t matter what I feel my gender is, that the only thing that mattered in determining my gender is that I have a uterus and bleed on a cycle.”

“It also implies the reverse is true, that someone who doesn’t have a uterus and doesn’t bleed on a cycle can’t be a woman and I’m sure Smalls would have so many words to say about the trans-misogyny in that implication,” Spot says. “Always is being generic in their replies to ats on Twitter, ‘your feedback has been passed on’ and ‘we love to hear from our customers!’ at the people tweeting them about the issues in the way the pads are branded now. I’ve cancelled your autoship, I’m not bringing more of those pads in the house to upset you. It’s the other replies to trans people waking up to this and allies pointing it out bothering me. This person is saying it’s misogynistic to say sticking the female symbol on a product might be transphobic and is saying trans people don’t want to associate women with words like strong and powerful and bold. Bullshit. Oh and this one, ‘If you’re not a girl then get a hysterectomy or take a pill so you stop bleeding.’”

Race sits up and looks at Spot in shock, “Do they not realise how expensive and invasive that surgery is? And most insurance plans won’t cover it unless you can prove a medical need and most insurance companies don’t consider being trans a medical need. And some people just really don’t like doctors and surgery. Also like that’s against our beliefs, same with birth control. Also also my period doesn’t normally bother me so why should I have a surgery I neither need nor want or take pills I neither need nor want just to conform to someone else’s idea of what a man should be. Also Sniper’s has a reaction to almost every birth control he’s tried. And don’t even get me started on how much Crutchie was slut shamed when he tried to get birth control before switching to his current doctor,” Race says. “Also also birth control doesn’t stop bleeding, it limits. So, you know, people on birth control still need pads. Or tampons.”

“Ya preaching to the choir here, babe,” Spot says. “Ugh, that woman’s a terf. ‘Anyone who needs this product because they have periods IS and will always remain a woman, simply by dint of meeting all necessary and sufficient criteria of the term. Their discomfort with this fact does not and cannot change it; this new craze for denying it will end eventually.’ Reason number 1 million teen trans male suicide attempt rates are at over half our population while cis teen suicide attempt rates as whole are at 8%. B L O C K E D blocked.”

“Dude stop, we’re both going to have dysphoria at this rate and then who’s gonna fly the plane?” Race says as he reaches over and tugs Spot’s phone from his hand.

“Probably Hotshot since he has his pilot licence,” Spot says with a shrug. Race couldn’t help but smile at their joke response to the who’s flying the plane joke. In a surreal twist, Hotshot was scared of flying but hated the loss of control over himself caused by that fear so much that he had got his pilot licence specifically to master the fear of flying.

An hour after that there was a knock on their apartment door. Race made a curious noise as he moves to peer over the back of the couch while Spot answers the door since Race has yet to put even his pj pants on.

“Kath?” Sport asks in surprise.

“I saw your tweet about the new pad wrapper. Sarah told me what mine and Race’s comparable sizes would be in Kotex pads so I went and got some for both of us,” Katherine says, “And Jack said Race’s comfort food is mac and cheese so there’s a box of that in there too.” There’s rustling as she passes one of the bags in her hands to Spot.

“You didn’t have to do that, Kath,” Race calls from the couch, “but thank you!”

“Your comfort is important to our family, Racetrack Higgins, and don’t you forget that,” Kath says.

Spot tosses a box of pads at Race and says “Go change into these, you might feel better!” Race wraps the blue and green blanket Buttons knit for him around him and wandered off to the bathroom with the new box of pads.

Spot was right, after taking a shower to rid himself of the feeling of crawling out of his skin and changing his pad to one not covered with the female symbol, he does feel better. The mac and cheese helps too. So does curling up on the couch and watching his ultimate comfort movie, Muppet Treasure Island. He’s still feeling hella dysphoric, but it’s better.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the fic tags, I made Race go through all the same emotions and thoughts I did when I opened up my bag of Always pads and pulled one out to be confronted by the female symbol. The tweets Spot reads out are paraphrases of tweets sent directly at me for saying “hey this campaign has some issues” except the TERF one, that’s a direct copy of a tweet from a person whose @ I’ve forgotten because I’ve since blocked them. Is the campaign transphobic? Is saying “hey, I don’t think you thought this campaign and the affects it has on trans and NB individuals through” misogynistic? I haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t think it is, but I am one NB individual. All I know is I never usually have dysphoria around my period and I’m on day two of dysphoria that can be traced to a specific pad wrapper design. My unused pads from the pack I bought are going to a friend and I’ve switched to U by Kotex. I also sent a message to my friend about the wrapper change in case their boyfriend uses Always pads..


End file.
